Long-Distance Marriage

by Kendrick, Sharon

  She gave him a considering stare. ‘You know it isn’t’

  ‘What, then?’

  She sighed. ‘I’ve seen what marriage can do. I told you about my parents. It destroyed my mother’s talent and ambition. It made her narrow her horizons until they were non-existent. But she was nineteen, and pregnant. Trapped. I’m not in that position of having to depend on marriage.’

  ‘I see,’ he said neutrally, and something in his eyes made her try to explain some more.

  ‘I’m happy as I am with you,’ she told him. She met the narrowed assessment of his stare. ‘And you don’t have to marry me,’ she added, by way of an explanation, ‘just to get me to go to bed with you. I’m prepared to do that anyway. See?’ And she began to unbutton her own shirt slowly in a movement which was unashamedly provocative, but he was still frowning.

  ‘Is that what you think?’ he quizzed softly. ‘Is that really what you think?’

  Without warning he picked her up and carried her to her bedroom where he stripped first her, with a slow, tantalising, almost unbearable precision, and then himself. It was as though he was demonstrating every sensual skill he possessed, as, with his hands and his mouth, he brought her to the brink of such heart-stopping pleasure so many times that she thought she would die if he did not take her properly.

  ‘Please...’ she pleaded on a strangled gasp as she felt him pushing hard and full against her belly.

  His smile was strangely cruel. ‘Please what, Alessandra?’

  ‘Please—make love to me,’ she begged.

  His smile was fleeting but triumphant. ‘No,’ he whispered.

  ‘No?’ she echoed in frustrated disbelief, almost in a parody of what had taken place earlier on the sofa.

  ‘Not unless you agree to marry me first,’ he told her ruthlessly.

  ‘But why?’ she breathed in wondrous bemusement as excitement began to throb through her veins, only to heighten the desire he’d inflamed. He still wanted to marry her?

  ‘Because I love you. And you love me, don’t you?’

  It was pointless to deny what must have been as plain as the stars in the sky. ‘Yes. I love you.’

  ‘Then why not? I’ve never been in love before,’ he husked. ‘Never even imagined being in love before. And love means marriage, at least in my book. Old-fashioned, maybe. But true.’

  She made one last attempt, even though she felt herself giving in to him, wanting to give in to him! ‘I don’t necessarily believe in marriage, Cameron.’

  ‘You have to believe in it,’ he laughed softly. ‘It’s true.’

  “That isn’t what I meant and you know it,’ she protested. ‘My own parents—’

  ‘That was someone else,’ he objected. ‘This is us.’

  ‘But why?’ she queried. ‘I thought that men wanted no-string relationships. So why marriage?’

  He didn’t hesitate, not even for a second. ‘Because I have to have you. Because you’re mine, Alessandra,’ he ground out with ruthless possessiveness. ‘All mine.’

  Because I play hard to get, thought Alessandra, realising that what attracted him to her was the very quality which would govern her future life with him. The elusive butterfly. Always keeping him wondering...

  ‘So will you marry me?’ he enquired, and again she felt his hardness and his fullness pushing against her.

  She was lost, for how could she refuse? ‘Oh, yes,’ she breathed, in a mixture of agony and ecstasy. ‘Oh, yes...yes...’

  And only then did he reach down to the trousers which he’d dropped on the floor, to withdraw something from his pocket, and Alessandra was torn between feeling relieved that he had thought to protect her and a strangely unreasonable disappointment.

  ‘I see you came well prepared,’ she said somewhat waspishly, and then blushed as he raised his eyebrows mockingly.

  ‘I used to be a Boy Scout,’ he teased her.

  ‘And do you always carry condoms around with you?’ she demanded.

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘Now what’s going on in that beautiful head of yours?’ he mused, and then nodded. ‘Oh, I see—you don’t want me to think you’re a pushover?’

  ‘I wasn’t—’

  ‘Sweetheart, you’re no pushover,’ he told her softly as he ripped open the foil and rolled the protection on and Alessandra watched him in an agony of frustration.

  ‘I’m very choosy.’ She gulped.

  ‘And so am I Very,’ he smiled. ‘Shall I tell you when I bought these?’

  ‘When?’ she whispered.

  ‘The day I met you,’ he whispered as he moved on top of her. ‘I went straight from your office to the chemist. Does that appal you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered in delight.

  ‘Me too,’ he agreed shamelessly against her ear.

  And he thrust into her victoriously, but, when he felt the barrier of her maidenhead, he paused momentarily and she saw the astonishment which widened his eyes as he looked down at her in delighted amazement.

  And, in that moment, the act of love became not just his victory but her victory too.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WITH a start Alessandra realised that she’d been daydreaming in the shower far longer than she’d intended, so she quickly dried herself and dressed, and hurried back into her office.

  She stood in front of the mirror to the right of her desk and peered at herself objectively. The eyes which looked back were bright and sparkling—they gave no hint whatsoever of the fact that she was functioning on about three hours of sleep! Thanks a bunch, Cameron, she thought wryly, but she shivered in spite of herself.

  Oddly enough, she felt more out of sorts after her shower than she had done before. And that was what daydreaming did for you, she told herself reprovingly. Remembering those early days when Cameron had jolted into her life with all the force of an electric storm. And realising that, somehow, the marriage had not quite measured up to what she’d been expecting...

  With a final glance at her appearance, Alessandra hurried down the two floors to Andrew’s office where the two of them, together with John Edwards, had a fairly rewarding session regarding ideas for the coming year’s advertising campaign.

  Alessandra had just arrived back at her desk and was busy putting all the ideas into some sort of logical order when Janice bleeped her to say that Cameron was on the line.

  Since she’d arrived at the office she’d been too busy to dwell on last night’s confrontation, but the vivid memories suddenly came back to haunt her. Because, despite Cameron’s apologies, and for all his accusations that she had enjoyed the powerful, physical conclusion to their argument, something uneasy still flickered inside her, some nameless fear.

  Cameron was a man who liked to be in control, and yet he had deliberately chosen to many someone he could not control. Because Alessandra had no illusions about the many women she was sure would have thrown in a promising career to follow him to the ends of the earth.

  And last night, frustrated by his lack of control over her, he had sought to use a weapon he had never before employed—his sexual prowess and experience. Alessandra had not wanted him to take her so mercilessly. Oh, her body had, sure, but her mind had not. And he had ruthlessly and efficiently swept all her protestations aside, had seduced her into something which it seemed almost shameful to have enjoyed so much.

  Had something in the precarious balance of their relationship shifted last night?

  Suddenly her fingers were trembling. ‘Put him through, please, Janice.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Hi,’ he said softly.

  ‘His.’

  ‘Were you late?’

  ‘You heard the alarm clock,’ Alessandra reminded him drily, her heart racing as she remembered just at which point it had begun to ring. ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘Actually, no.’ She heard the low laughter in his deep voice. ‘My mind was on other things.’ There was a pause. ‘Are you free for lunch?’

  Alessandra surveyed the hu
ge pile of correspondence on her desk and fought the temptation. ‘Darling, I’m sorry—I can’t. There’s the biggest heap of—’

  ‘Spare me the gory details,’ he interrupted, and his voice sounded so chilly that Alessandra began to work out whether she could get out to meet him for a bite of lunch.

  ‘I could manage an hour.’

  ‘Huge concession,’ he mocked sardonically. ‘It’ll take me fifteen minutes to get over there, in this traffic. London’s become one big traffic jam.’

  ‘Whereas I suppose there isn’t another vehicle in sight on the wide, open roads of Manchester?’ she suggested sweetly, before she realised that they seemed to be heading for an argument again. ‘Look,’ she said, in a conciliatory tone. ‘How about we have a sandwich here, in my office?’ They could close the door and switch the phones off and talk. Then kiss each other to death, and do whatever else came to mind.

  Her voice softened. ‘Avocado and bacon on rye. Would that suit you?’ she reminded him huskily. ‘With a chilled, freshly squeezed orange juice?’

  There was a slight pause. ‘No can do,’ he answered repressively. ‘If I can only have your attention between memos then I have a whole heap of paperwork of my own I can tackle.’

  ‘You would have come once!’ she accused, more hurt than she cared to admit. ‘You would have dropped everything! You were quite unrepentant about your desire to have lunch with me when we first met!’

  He gave a soft laugh. ‘Darling, I was hunting you down then!’

  ‘And now you’re not?’ All the fun of the chase, she thought. Only now there’s no chase and the fun all seems to be going.

  He sighed. ‘Alessandra, when a man makes the ultimate statement of commitment by marrying a woman it does kind of imply that they have reached a highly satisfactory conclusion to the—’

  ‘Hunt?’ she put in.

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘You were the one who introduced the word!’ she told him. ‘And, if you’re the hunter, then doesn’t that imply that I’m some kind of victim?’

  He laughed at this. ‘Darling, anyone less like a victim than you I simply can’t imagine! And if this conversation continues for any longer then I might as well come over and we can have it face to face.’

  She suddenly found herself wishing that she had agreed to see him—and to hell with the paperwork! ‘But I’ll see you tonight, won’t I?’ she asked.

  ‘That rather depends on what time you get home.’ He paused. ‘I’m afraid that I’m going to have to fly up to Manchester later.’

  ‘Oh, Cameron!’ she protested. ‘You’ve only just got back! Must you?’

  ‘I’m afraid I must. There’s an industrial dispute going on on the shop floor.’

  ‘Serious?’ she put in, her voice reflecting her surprise since she knew what an excellent relationship Cameron had always had with his employees.

  ‘Not serious, no. Fairly minor, I hope, and I can’t foresee any difficulties in sorting it out. They wanted me to fly up this afternoon, but then I discovered that the union reps are talking to the men—so I delayed it.’ He stifled a yawn, and Alessandra suddenly thought how weary he sounded. ‘We’ve arranged to talk early tomorrow morning before the plant opens. So I’ll be leaving here just after seven tonight.’

  ‘Can’t I take you to the airport?’

  ‘Darling,’ he put in gently, ‘I have my own plane now, remember? With my own pilot—who’ll be arriving this afternoon. I don’t need you to ferry me around any more.’

  She supposed that his words were intended to be comforting, but they were anything but. He had just bought an expensive toy, which, although supposed to make seeing each other easier, now seemed to be having the opposite effect. ‘But surely I can still run you to the airport?’ she asked in confusion.

  ‘You can come along for the ride—I’d love to have you—you know that. But my pilot happens to be my chauffeur too, and will be picking me up from the flat.’

  ‘I see.’ Alessandra swallowed. So if she did go along for the ride they wouldn’t even be alone. Suddenly her much fought for independence seemed hollow. What separate lives they led...

  The red light on her desk began blinking. ‘Something urgent has come up,’ she told him reluctantly.

  ‘Okay. Just try and get home before I leave, won’t you?’

  ‘I will,’ she said, in a small voice, and replaced the receiver as carefully as if it were made of glass.

  She left work sharply at five, an hour earlier than she normally would have done, and attempted to get home. But the travelling situation was even worse than it had been that morning. It was still raining and the tubes were running late, with huge delays.

  Alessandra couldn’t face another battle with all the commuters, struggling to get home. Funny, really. She had always felt sorry for them before, in their mad, mad rush to get out of the city.

  But now she found herself wondering what it might be like to wake up to the sound of birdsong rather than the sound of cars revving up. Or what it might be like to open the door to the scent of flowers, rather than the smell of exhaust fumes.

  So she found herself waiting ages for another cab, and when she did thankfully hurl herself into the back of one she was forced to sit in a stationary queue for the best part of half an hour. She stared gloomily out of the window at the rain teeming onto the shiny grey pavements. Cameron was right. London had become one long traffic jam.

  It was six forty-five by the time she arrived home—which gave her and Cameron approximately fifteen minutes together. Blast it! she thought, her finger reaching forward to punch the button to close the lift door, when there was a feminine shriek in a soft American accent of, ‘Don’t go! Can you hold the door for me, please?’

  Alessandra looked at the young woman with pale blonde hair, the colour of mayonnaise, who was struggling towards the lift. Laden under the burden of about ten carrier bags by the look of things! She stepped aside to let the breathless woman in. ‘You look a little overloaded,’ she commented with some amusement.

  ‘Thanks,’ smiled the woman as the lift doors slid shut. ‘I’ve been out shopping.’

  ‘And how!’ laughed Alessandra.

  ‘I’m terribly late and I have to get changed!’ said the woman, with an anxious little glance at her watch.

  ‘Sounds exciting,’ remarked Alessandra as the lift moved up, wishing that she had something to get changed for tonight instead of a hurried chat with her husband and then a night alone with a book or the television.

  ‘Oh, it is!’ agreed the blonde excitedly. ‘Absolutely hectic, too!’

  ‘Oh?’ queried Alessandra politely as the lift pinged to a halt on the next floor, and the doors opened to reveal that no one was waiting. ‘People always do that,’ she observed. ‘Ring for the lift and then use the stairs.’

  The blonde shrugged her slim shoulders. ‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said ruefully. ‘Where I live there are only stairs, and I’m not quite sure how safe they are at night. Certainly nothing like this place—with a uniformed commissionaire and all!’ she added, a touch wistfully.

  Alessandra suddenly felt guilty for moaning. Property in the capital was very expensive and very few could afford to live in this area. In fact, she certainly couldn’t have done before she’d married Cameron! She looked at the girl, who, on second glance, was older than her looks had first suggested. Her blonde hair was obviously not natural, but it was beautifully and expertly tinted and contrasted dramatically with the deep blue eyes which glittered like sapphires in her heart-shaped face.

  Alessandra nodded towards the pile of carrier bags at the other girl’s feet. ‘You look as though you’ve been busy,’ she observed.

  ‘Oh, I have,’ confided the blonde with disarming frankness. ‘In fact I’ve had the most wonderful day. First of all my new boss took me out to lunch—’

  ‘Somewhere nice, I hope?’ questioned Alessandra with a smile.

  ‘Mmm. We went to the Savoy.’

&nbs
p; Cameron used to take her there, she thought. Used to. When was the last time they had had lunch together? ‘Lucky you—must be a generous boss.’

  ‘Oh, he is! I ate so much that I could barely squeeze into the uniform I’ve got to wear for my new job!’

  ‘What kind of—? Oh! This is my floor,’ said Alessandra with an apologetic shrug. ‘This is where I get out. Good luck with your new job!’

  But the blonde was picking up her carrier bags. ‘It’s my floor too. Could you possibly hold the door open for me? Oh, thanks!’

  ‘Who’s your new boss?’ enquired Alessandra with interest as she fished around in her handbag for her keys. There was only one other flat on this floor and apparently it was owned by a fabulously rich Arab who only ever used it during Ascot week. Or so Cameron had told her. Alessandra had never actually met the man herself. She hid a small smile of amusement as she wondered in just what capacity the beautiful blonde was being employed!

  The blonde beamed as she began to answer Alessandra’s question. ‘His name is—Well, well, well,’ she said, and her voice took on a curiously attractive tone. ‘Speak of the devil—here he is!’

  It happened with all the speed of a stone being dropped as the door to the flat—her flat, or rather their flat—opened. No, Alessandra corrected herself silently. His flat, Cameron’s flat. For it was still just as much his as the day she’d first moved into it. His decor. His belongings. Her own things were all still in her old flat which they hadn’t got around to selling yet as they didn’t really need to. And they wouldn’t need her furniture until that day, in some undiscussed future, when they might want a bigger house...

  Alessandra registered that the blonde was grinning at her husband, her face all lit up like a child’s, but that Cameron’s intelligent eyes were resting thoughtfully on his wife.

  No discomfiture there, thought Alessandra as she gave him an unreadable smile.

  ‘Ah,’ he murmured, his deep voice heavy with some sentiment which Alessandra couldn’t for the life of her work out. ‘I see that you two have already met.’

  ‘Not formally,’ said Alessandra as she glanced at the blonde who was looking from one to the other with perplexity written all over her lovely heart-shaped face.